A Report to the Labour Commission on Older Women

A Report to the Labour Commission on Older Women Representing Older Women in the Media: the Key Issues Dr. Josephine Dolan Estella Tincknell, Associate Professor in Film and Culture University of the West of England, Bristol The position of older women in the media industries The position of older women in the media industries needs to be investigated in the broadest sense of representation. That is, who is represented, on what terms, and for whose benefit? Representation refers both to the public sphere of political and social activity and to the realm of media, film and television, in which powerful images of the world, and meanings about it, are circulated. In both areas women become increasingly marginalised as they age and it is only by addressing both aspects of the problem that real change can be achieved. Crucially, powerful myths, unsupported assumptions and taken for granted beliefs about who and what women can be help to institutionalise sexist ageism and to naturalise the ways in which women and men experience profound differences in their access to recognition and power. We therefore need to investigate where, when and how older women are represented across the full gamut of media from newspapers and magazines to broadcasting and cinema. We also need to make meaningful connections between representation in its democratic sense and representation in its mediatory sense in order to achieve real world change. As well as more obvious concerns with the practice of ageist/sexist discrimination against older women in the media industries exemplified by the high profile cases of television presenters Miriam O’Reilly and Arlene Phillips, account must be taken of the ways in which older women are either stereotyped by, or marginalised and made invisible within the vast majority of media output, both fictional and factual. The connection between a reductive range of representations within the media and reduced opportunities for employment has been well established in relation to discriminatory practices based on class, race, gender or sexuality. It is therefore crucial that this Labour Commission avoids a fragmented or short-term approach in which the immediate issue of employment opportunities for older women in the media is privileged above an examination of the representational practices that stereotype older women and thereby lend legitimacy to sexism and ageism. Indeed, overtly political interventions to ensure older women are valued in the media workplace will not have long-term benefits if the mechanisms used do not recognise that: a) the presence of individually recognisable and powerful women in the media will not automatically ensure wider change since such women frequently benefit from reproducing not challenging institutional sexism; and b) that media representations matter because they do not simply reflect reality – they shape our perception of reality, often in highly distorted ways. It is thus only by recognising the centrality of media to the beliefs and values that shape sexist age discrimination that its consequences in the form of economic impoverishment, cultural marginalisation and social exclusion can be properly addressed. The proliferation of images of women The widespread use of media images of women that are decorative, rather than illustrative, is brought into sharp focus when the absence of older women is acknowledged. It is not the case that images of women are absent from our screens, pages and streets. Rather, the opposite is true and images of women are prolific. Yet – and this is the problem - they favour and approve only a narrow range of womanhood: a range from which older women are largely excluded. In newspapers, images of attractive young women are routinely used to mark the publication of A Level results, for 1 instance, while pictures of young female models and celebrities are frequently deployed on business pages in relation to stories to which they have the most tangential connection. Such practices ensure that whilst images of women are widespread, they are not simply content determined. This hyper-visibility still extends to the use of young women as visual ‘accessories’ or trophies attached to items or brands aimed at men (cars, shaving gear, even farm machinery) in ways that are so ubiquitous they appear perfectly natural. The only advertisements to consistently use older women are themselves selling ‘age’ orientated products such as stair-lifts, baths, and even wills or legal advice. It is almost unknown for an advertisement for a prestige or glamorous product/brand to associate itself with ‘older’ women unless that product promises to dispel the signs of aging (as in Jane Fonda’s advertisements for L’Oreal), even though it is common for aging male stars (e.g. George Clooney) to feature as the face of such brands. A more properly ‘reflective’ range of images would mean that, for example, most hair care products (not just hair dye)would be advertised using models over 40 or that popular drama would regularly feature female central characters who are over 50. Both changes would genuinely acknowledge the real world demographic, yet both are unlikely to happen without deliberate intervention. The pervasive surfeit of images of young women does not then reflect real world conditions so much as the power of the image and the continued dominance of patriarchal structures and ideas that objectify young women and demean and marginalise older ones. The common sense claim that television and other media simply reflect the tastes and wishes of a majority is undermined by the extent to which both audience demographics and media institutions and structures are increasingly complex, and by the simple fact that women have always constituted a majority of the UK population but they have never dominated British cultural forms or media in terms of either numbers or power. The presence of images of young women and the absence of images of older ones is not a symptom of women’s own tastes and wishes, but rather indicates the continued power and privilege of men within the institutional structures of media and the ideological structures of beliefs and values. Because this pattern is ubiquitous, short-termist approaches which ‘pick off’, scrutinise and critique only those media addressed to women are not only unlikely to facilitate meaningful and fundamental change, they will also imply that it is the responsibility of women alone to undertake the necessary social interventions that will improve things. For example, the current concern with fashion magazines’ use of extremely thin and under-age models has undoubtedly helped to identify some deeply problematic practices and assumptions, but the world of fashion is not exclusively responsible for images of women and certainly does not contain the most demeaning, offensive or abject representations of older women. These tend to be found in lads’ magazines, male-orientated comedy TV shows and ‘gross-out’ comedy films, all of which are addressed to young white and middle class men, whose cultural power is rarely challenged or problematized. If we are to improve media representations of older women a concerted effort to address both men and women, both young and old, is required. The absence and presence of images of older women While older women are statistically largely absent from a broad swathe of media they do appear in age and gender specific spaces, genres and social or cultural roles. For example, on television older women may appear in the role of comic battleaxe (Nora Batty, Hilda Ogden, Hyacinth Bucket, Mrs Brown – here the grotesque older woman is a man in drag), as victims or potential victims of crime (newspapers, television news), and as ‘at risk’ through the health impacts of aging (health campaigns, advertising), and also in stereotypical roles primarily linked to the family and domesticity (the ubiquitous ‘nanna’ found in all too many media texts). British television sitcoms have historically provided a space where older women might be found, but here, as in other media, they tend to be in highly stereotyped roles as secondary and inherently comic figures: as dotty 2 housewives or ‘batty, bossy and bustling’ mothers or mothers-in- law. Generally, such characters are also presented as domestically focused rather than economically independent (Keeping Up Appearances, My Family). Even the refusal of domesticity by Absolutely Fabulous’s comic grotesques, Edina and Patsy, is no closer to reflecting the real world in which most British women work for a living throughout their lives. Yet such stereotypes persist even in contemporary ‘woman friendly’ shows such as Miranda, and make little space for alternative figures that represent different modes of aging. The black comedy Getting On is one significant exception – and it is screened on the ‘minority’ channel BBC Four for no discernible reason other than because of its cast and subject matter: older women. To date, no British television sitcom has offered the kind of positive, witty and subversive representation of older women found in the 1980s US show, The Golden Girls, or the gritty depiction of a working class middle aged woman found in the 1990s comedy, Roseanne, or the recent politically attuned legal drama, Harry’s Law. What these programmes powerfully illustrate is that, where there is sufficient will, it is possible to make interesting and widely accessible television programmes featuring active and likeable older female characters that attract a large audience. Generally though, where ‘older women’ are featured in British television drama outside the regular soap operas (as in Last Tango in Halifax) it is often in roles that make ‘being old’ a defining characteristic and point of the narrative rather than as human beings who happen to be over 50 or 60. Exceptions to these representations include the highly successful TV dramas Call the Midwife and Downton Abbey (both marked by extensive casts of older women, yet both denigrated as ‘sentimental nostalgia’), the detective dramas Vera and Scott and Bailey and the ubiquitous Miss Marple.

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